Beauty
Feeling very, uh, FIT, sipping my Jamba Juice (the seasonal Pumpkin Smash flavor. I’ve definitely got white trash in my blood) post-work out. Hit the gym twice within twelve hours. I’m NOT an Uber-Gay, I’ve just come to the conclusion that the only way I stay disciplined at the gym is by momentum. If I let too many hours pass, the tractor pull gets weaker and weaker. And if you’ve heard me bitch about being broke, making non-profit wages here in SF, then you might ask why I’ve held on to two gym memberships; Gold’s on Market (circuit central) and the 24 Hours on Potrero. 24 Hours is a half block from work, and very straight, so when I’m feeling less-than-perfect, it’s easier to roll in there under a few sweatshirts than it is at Gold’s. Of course, THEN as I get back into shape and a little more interested in the Games We Play, Gold’s is a more conducive setting. God. And I think I’m so immune to all that. Like I said, sexuality’s power knocks me speechless. Anyway, I’ve become a believer in the Power of the Treadmill to ease the depression. Thirty minutes of sweating and I no longer feel like the world is about to come to an end.

Last night I went to Gold’s with my new friend Handsome, who recently moved here from L.A. (Thanks for taking me to Sandra). I find it much easier hanging out with people who are better looking than I am than I used to. When I was in my early twenties, I had a gorgeous friend named Chris who everyone was in love with, much to my chagrin. I’ve come to realize since then, though, that it’s okay if only two out of ten guys think I’m a hottie, compared to say, oh, nine out of ten for Handsome (are you blushing yet?) I’d probably dig those two more than the others anyway. (That is, if I’m lucky enough to get two)

What does this have to do with poetry and the human spirit? Well, I don’t know yet. But having majored in sociology, I do love to watch the inner workings of groups and cultures. And eventually, I do write about them.

Write Me

Mac
Until I become a Web-Page Guru, I’ll have to make do with ready-made templates. For a couple of pics, check this out. Send me mail. Or ghost stories.

Desert Storm
Today Paul in San Diego sends me this article from the NY Times. Seems as though the U.S. is finally admitting that soldiers fighting in the Gulf War were in greater danger than they thought. Veterans of that war were twice as likely as other soldiers to get ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Now I am trying to rack my brains wondering what Gulf War Vets and my Mom have in common, and am drawing a blank (but I’ll keep you posted….um, burning oil? night vision goggles? Hmmm.) She grew up in Kansas, not the desert. Since it took them two years to even admit to such findings, I’m not holding my breath waiting for updates from them. Will we look back on this and say “if only we knew then what we know now”? I can’t say I hold out much hope for a cure, not at the rate it’s progressing in her. She’s outlived some of the statistics, at least for her rare type (which includes Parkinson’s and dementia. Go play with those odds).

I’m thinking a lot about next week and seeing her. Lee says she gets weaker and weaker. The bright spot seems to be that her spirits are good, and I remember her reaching out to hug me every twenty minutes when I was there in August. Because of the nature of the disease, (the loss of her speech ability, the progression of the dementia, etc), it’s hard to know if her spirits are good because she’s made some peace, or if the dementia has whittled away at her consciousness, hopefully erasing some of the more pressing questions of mortality and suffering. I can only guess.

Is there more that I could do? Should I go home again for an extended period of time? I wasn’t of much use then (um, not so sober). And I don’t know what else I could do now. She’s surrounded by able-bodied friends, and cared for by Lee. Still. Is it a hero thing? Do I need to save something in order to live without the question “Did I do all that I could?” If she’s coherent enough, I’ll ask her that myself

Poz
Just when I thought Sandra Bernhard had lost her edge, her show at the Warfield tonight tore the shit up. I laughed so hard I cried and sweated in my dumb sweater up there in the balcony with all the other gay boys. Despite a last-minute jab at AA (such an easy target, I mean, c’mon, who in their right mind would choose to sit in a church basement on a folding chair drinking bad coffee on their nights off? We do it cuz the shit works. ), she manages to win me back by pulling our her rendition of “Little Red Corvette”. And besides, anytime she talks about Stevie Nicks she makes me fall out. Like a Gypsy. Like Rhiannon.

On my lunch hour went and got my blood drawn. My numbers have been good, hope they stay that way. It’s odd to be a statistic, to be on the other side of the fence. To write my undergraduate thesis on AIDS as a negative boy, and now, several years later, to carry “it” around with me. To be one of the young ones, the ones who should have known better. I don’t think I expected that the words “DD Free, UB2″ would have the affect they do on me today. If half of this city is positive, there are a hell of a lot of guys playing dumb, keeping secrets, or just plain hating who they are. Cuz too many pretend they are negative for the numbers to add up. Why don’t safe sex campaigns work better? Because we don’t understand sex and sexuality; the drive, the pull, the thing that makes us do the things we do, in that heat, in that dark, blissful space between two people. I don’t understand it. It’s power knocks me speechless.

Crazy.
Missed the 33 after the candlelight meeting so after I hug the Tattooed Monk good-bye at the corner of 18th and Castro, I make the long trek home down 18th Street to South Van Ness. As you drift further into the Mission the gay boys disappear. I pass two drunk straight couples, perhaps on their way back to the Marina after a dinner on Valencia St. Improbably, they’re dusted with glitter.

At the tennis courts in Dolores Park, someone has taken long strips of fabric and intertwined it in the chain link fence surrounding the courts: it spells “COOL”. It’s a cold night as the cloudcover lifts, I wonder again how cold can the palm trees get along Dolores. A man with a face like a mask, skin badly burned, passes me, head down, eyes to the ground. The group of drunks on the corner of Mission and 18th have pissed against the trash can again; little rivers to cross.

I hid under the baseball cap at the meeting, my eyes closed or looking at other people’s shoes. With the lights off sometimes it’s easier to talk from the floor, but tonight I kept quiet. It’s clear there are people crazier than me in this world, yet sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel a little more normal, connected to life and others. Even with Ski today I felt something wrapped around me, my perception and energy clouded by something that I wish would burn off, like fog. We sat in a bad donut shop on 24th St in Noe Valley, and when I told him that I had recently seen The Ex, he asked if we had had sex. I was surprised, a little taken aback. Of course not, I wanted to say, but are you asking out of jealousy? I wish. I couldn’t say what I wanted to say to him (i.e. “Have you fallen deeply, madly in love with me yet?”)so our time together seems to end early. We take the J Church back over the hill and part ways on (again) 18th St.

At home I resume the emotionally unnerving task of logging video tapes I made over a year ago, before I was sober and when I was still with The Ex. I have this great intention of putting together a little video montage for my family for Xmas, as I’m broke and I can’t afford real presents. We’ll see if that actually happens in the ten days before I leave for home.

So I watch The Ex and I in fast forward, me with my nervous speed twitches, hands constantly going to my face to scratch or smooth or just check, constantly, that I am alive. My face giving my quivering hands a place to rest. Watching us together I do miss him.

Note to self: Did I think taping hour-long stationary conversations between him and I would be art? Did I regret never having applied to be on a reality show? Blogging will have to suffice.

I can’t even listen to those taped conversations, out of fear of what I might have been saying, what crap I could have been justifying outloud, while inside I was an empty, brittle husk. At least I’ve changed, in some ways.

Okay.
I know I work for one of the best animal shelters in the world, but do we have to apply our humane animal treatment standards to mice? I just discovered a small nest of three in the cabinet over my head. I’m butch and all, but for godsakes my skin is still crawling a little. Aren’t there public health concerns? Louie hardly noticed. Then again, he’s no terrier.

I’m slumping (my own creative spelling) through work again, following link to link, reading friends’ blogs on company time. Can I just say here that I need a change? I keep having Bruce Springsteen going through my head; “I check my look in the mirror. Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…” (Dancing in the Dark, the song where Courtney Cox was supposedly a random fan at the foot of the stage, giggling over Bruce until he stuck out her hand and pulled her up. Though I never would have admitted it at the time (I was 13) I would have pushed Courtney out of the way and grabbed his hand myself.) But I do lately hate my clothes, my hair, my face, not necessarily in that order. I just feel so….er, normal-looking, conservative, something, I keep thinking about shaving my head again like I did in college, but I remain unconvinced that it looked that great on me.

To top it off, the latest antidepressant I’m on in my journey through the land of antidepressants, Remeron, seems to have made me put back on the five pounds I lost on Serzone. Although I like it on other guys, five extra pounds isn’t that flattering on me. Maybe instead of using the treadmill I’ll actually run after work. In the dark, around Dolores Park or something. To its’ credit, the last couple of days have been better than it was. I hate depression. It can be disheartening thinking that it may be part of my life forever, treated or not.

Last week I responded to a guy’s ad on gay.com (I won’t link it out of respect to his privacy). Nice butch-lookin hairy guy. He liked the pic I sent, and asked me this week to have coffee tomorrow, but I think I’m gonna postpone, feeling this way. I think the Remeron has chipped away a bit at my libido, too. Sometimes that can be pretty freeing, you know, not tied up so much to my sex drive, but when I get that way I can also see more clearly how it makes the rest of the world go round. Men. hrumph. But what gave me greater pause in responding right away to his email was that as I checked out HIS website (privacy, remember?) he mentioned that as part of his work in the sex education industry, his personal fetish favorites included blood-letting. (pause)

Ok, I consider myself pretty open-minded (dosen’t every comment like this start out the same way?) but if that is what gets him going, I imagine I’d have a hard time keeping him satisfied. Maybe it’s too soon to be doing all this. Maybe not. Besides, I’d much rather meet someone in person, it’s easier to judge potential chemistry that way rather than comparing pics online. Not that I’m getting very far with my real-time crush (there will definitely be no links to him yet).

I’m getting a little lightheaded here. Time to grab something to eat.

Pilot Episode.
Unusually quiet day at work; gray and drizzle outside, hardly enough for an umbrella. Nothing like the rain in the Midwest, the hard, thick rain. Lightning and thunder. I do miss some things. Fall, the smell of it. Warm summer nights. Everyone knowing who you are and what you’ve done (relatively speaking).
Where did that come from? Guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic, or maybe the upcoming trip home to Minneapolis has me thinking. But December in MN is not fall, nor will there be thunder and lightning (and when there is, Eddie hiding under the bed or curled tight against you). It’ll be cold, and we can hope for some snow (the first month of snowfall, the actual sight of it falling quietly over the city).
More people drifting into the office now; dogs getting up and moving about, Mia giving her warning bark which by now everyone is sick of. Post-lay-offs and I still have very little work to do, so I’m stealing company time and resources writing and posting this. At least it’s not porn sites. Not that I’m pure. I scanned Craig’s List’s “men for men” postings out of idle curiosity, promptly distracting me from any work to be done.
Louie sighing at my feet. He’s got a little collection of toys and bones under there, every item he’s stolen from the other dogs and hoarded. He’s sweet. On our walk to work he looks up at me, my face framed by the umbrella, and his tail starts wagging, he smiles in the way dogs do. I’m a lucky guy.
Strangely, on the same day I create DogPoet’s Campfire, a friend of mine sends me a link to his journal chronicling his escorting here in SF. My own exploits are admittedly tamer. I just hope to write more. There’s nothing quite as painful as being a writer who doesn’t write.
Christmas in Minneapolis means seeing my mother again, her body and mind further compromised by the ALS and dementia. The latter, if nothing else, may have simplified her struggle enough so that she seems in good spirits about life, while her body weakens and the neurons commanding her muscles wink out like dying stars. Lee, her partner, is dealing with this day by day. I cannot pretend to know what she is experiencing, and the stress has come out twisted up sometimes in visits that my brother and I make home. Though I wish she could treasure us the way she does her own children, I’m making my peace with that. (as I should, as a “grown-up”). You only get one mother, right? Even if you have a lesbian step-mom.
I’ve been scrolling through poetry sites lately, trolling for inspiration perhaps. I’ve let the inner critic and my fear of the Literary Establishment keep my from writing too long. Plus that and a daily crystal/booze habit that I nurtured until just over a year ago. What seems to be the most important thing is to develop the voice without letting those critics get their share of head space. And to read, read, read. I wish I had a couple hundred bucks to drop on a class or two now; Poetry Lit or Writing to start and make up for my poetry/english deficit in college. Maybe over xmas I’ll rake in a little cash.
I’m waiting for my friend’s roommate to burn out on crystal and maybe leave the city or at least move so that I could take over his $500/month room. More space, privacy, view for 300 bucks less. $800 for a room with three roommates, four dogs, and a TV on the other side of my pocket doors is too much. My gratitude for it is running thin, I admit.